UConn Women's Soccer Coach Tsantiris Retiring After 37 Years

Courant file

UConn women's soccer coach Len Tsantiris is retiring after 37 years at the helm.

UConn women's soccer coach Len Tsantiris is retiring after 37 years at the helm. (Courant file)

Staff report

Len Tsantiris saw it all. He started coaching girls soccer at E.O. Smith High School in 1977, just as Title IX was starting to make an impact on girls’ and women’s sports. And in 1981, he started coaching the fledgling UConn women’s soccer team.

After 37 years, four national championship game appearances, seven Final Four appearances and over 500 wins, Tsantiris, 68, announced his retirement from UConn Tuesday.

“It’s good,” Tsantiris said. “It was time. I was thinking about doing that for a while. Every year at the end, I would think about it, if I can do another year. I kept going, but this time I think it was enough. I don’t think I had the energy to go recruiting and travel and all that.”

His team went 7-9-3 this season, losing in the first round of the AAC tournament to Memphis, 3-1.

Tsantiris finished his career with 570 wins, the second most in women’s soccer history. He was the second coach to collect 500 wins.

UConn advanced to the national championship game four times, losing each time to national powerhouse North Carolina (1984, 1990, 1997 and 2003).

Margaret Rodriquez, a former All-American soccer player and an associate head coach, will serve as interim head coach. In a statement announcing the retirement, UConn said it would begin a national search for a head coach immediately.

Asked for a favorite memory, Tsantiris said, “The only thing that is missing was a national championship, but everything else we did would be in there, not just one thing. Most important are the kids we had there. They made the tradition we had at UConn.”

The Huskies also advanced to 31 NCAA tournaments, including 26 straight from 1982-2007.Tsantiris graduated from UConn in 1977 after playing for legendary coach Joe Morrone. He won three state championships at E.O. Smith before taking over the UConn program in 1981.

When he started coaching at E.O. Smith, there were only 12 girls soccer teams in the state. When he started at UConn, he said, there were only 40 women’s college soccer teams in the entire country, in all the divisions. He saw the sport grow and flourish.

Losing four times to the same team in the national final was tough, but North Carolina, which has won 21 of the 35 NCAA championships starting in 1982, was dominant and hard to beat. UConn lost to the Tar Heels 2-0 in 1984, 6-0 in 1990, 2-0 in 1997 and 6-0 in 2003.

“It was tough; they were very good,” Tsantiris said. “We played them all four times in North Carolina. They were untouchable in those days.”

Tsantiris was inducted into the Connecticut Soccer Hall of Fame in 2003 and was the 1997 NSCAA Division 1 National Coach of the Year. He won numerous coach of the year awards, including Division I Northeast Coach of the Year (1983, 1987, 1995, 1996), Big East Coach of the Year (1995, 1998) and the AAC Coach of the Year (2015, 2016). He coached 45 NSCAA All-Americans, including Sara Whalen, who was honored as the national player of the year in 1997.

Felice Duffy, one of his first All-Americans, still keeps in touch with Tsantiris, who was a student-teacher at E.O. Smith when she went to school there.

“I think it’s well-deserved, congrats to him for making it through this many years,” said Duffy, a former assistant U.S. attorney who now has her own practice in New Haven. “Coaching’s tough these days. It’s tiring. It’s hard work.

“A lot of the players stay in touch with him. For me, the thing that’s always been front and center with him is he just loves soccer.”

Tsantiris said he will have plenty to do in retirement. He plays the violin, lute and bouzouki, a traditional Greek instrument. He has a home in Florida, where he enjoys boating. And he likes to fix things and do restoration work on houses. He and his wife, Susan, have two children and two grandchildren.